SPENDING time with your kids does them no good, actually.
Listen up, Mums: all that time you spent with your children as a parent? Worthless, apparently.
A new study described as groundbreaking, suggests that the amount of time mothers spent with their children after they turn three has no impact – none – on their course in life.
The study rejects current parenting models, which suggest that time lavished upon children will somehow have a positive impact on their development.
The report says “the amount of time parents spend with their kids between the ages of 3 and 11 has virtually no relationship to how children turn out, and a minimal effect on adolescents.”
“I could literally show you 20 charts, and 19 of them would show no relationship between the amount of parents’ time and children’s outcomes. Nada. Zip,” one of the study’s authors Melissa Milkie told The Washington Post.
All of which must be interpreted as another win for 1970s parents, who always knew that leaving kids in the car with a packet of chips while they went to the pub would do them no harm whatsoever.
KARL Lagerfield’s cat earned more than you did last year.
The designer told New York magazine that his pussy, named Choupette (it’s a French term of endearment) made more than $3 million from modelling assignments.
One of the ads was for a Japanese skin care product. The other was for a German car. Lagerfield told the magazine that the cat hates children and other animals and has two personal maids.
PRESIDENT Obama has written personal letters to 22 prisoners, offering them clemency for their crimes.
In a move that doubtless startled the inmates, the President has ordered them released in July. Most were serving life sentences for drug crimes.
The Constitution grants the President power to offer clemency to any prisoner as a way to offer forgiveness.
AS IF the deck quoits weren’t exciting enough, the new craze in cruising is swinging.
USA Today reports that swinging cruises – adults only, and often couples only –have become a hit on the high seas.
The cruises bring ‘like-minded’ couples together for sexy pyjama parties and clothing optional nightclubs, which sounds a bit chilly, given the destination for that one is Alaska.
NEGATIVE gearing – the process by which investors can claim a tax break on the loss made by their investment property – is in the government’s sights, as it seeks to balance the budget.
The Australian Financial Review today reports that negative gearing – long seen as something no government would touch – is being reviewed, along with pension cuts for so-called wealthy Australians, with more than $1.1 million in their super funds.
The newspaper report comes just a day after a Treasury report declared that negative gearing does not cause a tax distortion.
THE parents of a man who threw grenades into a darkened movie theatre before shooting more than 70 people have asked that he receive life in prison instead of the death penalty.
The trial of James Holmes, who killed 12 during his assault on the cinema showing a Batman movie in 2012, begins later this month.
Bob and Arlene Holmes say James is mentally ill. He has twice attempted suicide while in prison.
“Our kid was quiet, compliant, obeyed all the rules. He never bothered anyone, he never harmed anyone,” the couple told their local newspaper. They never realised he needed treatment.
The childhood home of alleged millionaire serial killer Robert Durst is on the market.
The young Robert was raised in the seven bedroom, six bathroom home in Scarsdale, New York.
Robert’s mother is said to have leapt to her death from the roof of the house when he was just five years old. Durst, who is currently awaiting trial for the shooting death of a friend and who admits to the dismemberment of another friend, after a self-defence killing, says he saw his mother jump.
Durst, whose family owns a billion dollars worth of Manhattan real estate, stars in The Jinx, a documentary about his extraordinary life, coming to Australian screens in July.
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